His eye is on the sparrow

Our Schnauzer, Max, was prancing toward us, like he had just won the blue ribbon at a dog show.

We were relaxing on our back patio, enjoying the mild weather, watching the sun set.

“What’s that in his mouth?” Lori innocently asked.

He dropped it at our feet, as if it were his offering to us.

“Oh no,” Lori exclaimed, “a dead bird.”

It wasn’t just a dead bird; it was a dead, baby bird. And worse, upon further examination, the nestling wasn’t totally dead. Its tiny beak was still moving.

“Oh, this is horrible,” Lori responded when I pointed out the mangled bird still had at least some life in it, enough for it to suffer.

She wanted to punish our dog, but when we looked back for him, he had disappeared.

In a matter of moments, Max returned, carrying another bird in his mouth. He then obsequiously placed it at our feet, as if he had fetched our evening meal for us.

“No, no, no,” Lori scolded him.

The dog looked confused.

I followed him to the scene of the crime: a bird’s nest had fallen to the ground, allowing our dogs to torment the nestlings.

“He’s only being what he is, a dog,” I said, playing defense attorney for Max as I corralled our dogs into the house.

And so it was: I was left with the unenviable task of putting the baby birds out of their misery.

Call it the circle of life.

Or death.

I looked back, way back, beyond the weeds in my vegetable garden near the fence row to the biblical narrative about another garden, the one that was once perfect. When the first humans chose their own way against God’s, not only did their rebellion affect them and us, but nature was somehow tilted askew as well.

And so we dwell for a time among thorns and thistles.

And dogs and cats, who are what they are, doing what they do to birds of their prey.

Sometimes in the still of the night, I hear the coyotes howling in the field behind our house. With one eye open, I wonder if they are celebrating the catch of the night at their dinner table. Assured that our dogs are safe inside, I breathe a sigh of relief before drifting back to sleep, for I know the dogs who so effortlessly took the life from those birds could just as easily be the next meal for the coyotes.

As I put on my Red Wings, covering those helpless birds in a towel, turning my head away as I stomp them out of their misery, I wish I had the miracle working power in me to touch those babies and bring them back to wellness and wholeness and life.

I yearned for that very same thing a few days later when someone needed a pastor to pray.

As Lori and I stood by his bed, a man whose body was riddled with cancer for no cause other than that he is caught in the same imperfect web of life and death as those nestlings, I wished again: I wanted to place my hands on his cancer ridden body and heal him, right there and then, a complete healing and not one just in part, and not only a healing for him but for everyone like him---people suffering with all manner of diseases and calamities that plague us this side of glory.

I did all I knew to do: I prayed, humbly asking and believing for a miracle.

And who knows? Perhaps by God’s grace it will happen.

This I do know: whether it’s on this side of eternity or the next:

His eye is on those sparrows,

And I know he watches over me.

And you.